Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner z”l
Rabbi Yehoshua Hutner z”l, one of the editors of the Encyclopedia Talmudit, has passed away at the age of 96. (hat tip) See here for more with an emphasis on the Habad angle. In addition to the monumental Encyclopedia Talmudit, Rabbi Hutner and Yad ha-Rav Herzog have also done important work in the field of manuscript studies of the Mishnah and Talmud through the Machon ha-Talmud ha-Yisraeli ha-Shalem. This aspect of Rav Hutner’s work has not been reported in the articles about his death, with the Talmudic Encyclopedia getting all of the attention. Rabbi Hutner was a friend of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and the following is a story told by Pinchas Peli which touches upon the philological study of rabbinic texts.
———
About 10:30 at night [Heschel] came over. He had already survived two heart attacks, and I had to prepare a drink for him. We started schmoosing, and he drank a little bit from the bottle and I drank a little bit, and when the bottle changed colors from brown to white, he said, “It’s time to go home-time to go back to the hotel.” I walked him to the hotel, and we got to the elevator, and I said goodbye to him, and I wanted to take him to his room. He said, “No, no, no; Just to the elevator.” I came back-my wife wasn’t in town that evening-I came back home. It was about 12:30, and I went to sleep-it was one o’clock. At 1:15 my telephone rang. “Reb Eliyahu.” I said, “Heschel, what happened!” Maybe he doesn’t feel good-1:15 at night. He said, “Are you asleep already?” I said, “No, no, I’m not asleep. What’s the matter?” He said, “I had to call you. Something very important happened that I must call you.” He said, “I got in to my room and found a package-a big envelope-and in that envelope was a new book with a letter from Rabbi Hutner,” -one of his friends in Jerusalem. Rabbi Hutner sent him this book that was published the same week. He said he had waited until 11:30 to give it to him in person, but since he saw he was not coming back, he left him the book. “This is a book that will change the course of Jewish history! It’s a tremendous book!” What is the book all about?” “It is a scientific, scholarly edition of the mishna.”… [I actually think that the book was the first volume of Dikdukei Soferim ha-Shalem on Ketubot which was published at this time, 1972. See Rabbi Shlomo Zevin's introduction to this volume about the importance of manuscripts for Talmud study. MM]
Rabbi Hutner is head of an institute where for eight years they were working to compare various manuscripts of the Mishna and put out a scholarly edition. It recalls all the variants in reading of the Mishna Ketubot that deals with marriages. Heschel said, “Well, since I’m interested a little bit in Jewish history, a book that’s going to change Jewish history, I couldn’t just let go until tomorrow, so I started reading, and the first two lines in the first mishna in Ketubot, which reads as follows, “A virgin marries on Wednesday” (it was an old tradition) “and I looked in the footnotes, and it says there that in four manuscripts it says Betulah (virgin) with a ‘vav’ in it, and in six manuscripts it says Betula without a ‘vav.’” That was his way of protesting against what scholarship could regard as so important. It is, of course, important to have a good text of the Mishna, very important, but when the priorities are changed, and we don’t know where the importance lies, that’s when our world suffers. Over-technology and technicalities-that’s what Heschel cried out against.”
From Prayer and Politics: The Twin Poles of Abraham Joshua Heschel, ed. Rabbi Joshua Stamper, 61-62.